PC Accessibility Options for the Blind? 33
Kevlar Gorilla writes "I've had the privilege of working over the summer as a night time security guard and computer tech resident for the CNIB Lake Joseph Centre way up north in Muskoka, Ontario. There are many blind and visually impaired guests that find their way around computers efficiently using programs such as ZoomText, JAWS, and Window Eyes as well as memorizing plenty of keyboard shortcuts. Given a small budget, I've been charged with updating some software and perhaps some hardware too. What newfangled, affordable and recommended text-reading software should we invest in? What new hardware would be a welcome addition? Is there any decent Linux or Mac stuff? What are your experiences with helping the blind or visually impaired with computing and the internet?"
GUI for visually impaired (Score:3, Interesting)
A simple setup I tried with a co-worker of my wife, who can see only about 30% of what is considered normal:
A standard PC with a TV output connected to the largest available TV set (about 82cm 16:9). Windows 2000 was set to a very low resolution (720x480), extra large fonts, high contrast, and a large mouse cursor. Together with the build-in Magnifier (Start -> Accessories -> Accessibility -> Magnifier), the system was usable.
A larger TV set (100 cm 4:3) or a beamer capable of projecting a 200 cm image would have been better, but he said he could work with that setup. Some things that would have disturbed me, like the slightly unsharp picture and the low overall quality of the display did not disturb him at all, simply because he can not see those details. He uses the big part of the screen to find the program, then he used the upper part with the magnifer to read the text on screen. He that that there are better magnifier programs available, but they cost a lot of money.
As a nice side-effect, you can use the TV speakers instead of cheap and noisy PC speakers.
Tux2000
Re:Dissapointed with Voice Over for Tiger (Score:2, Interesting)
Apple continued the work that Freedom Scientific and all the other companies abandoned when they realized the Mac platform was just too tiny to develop anything for, and if VoiceOver is the result of the work, then I am very impressed. If anything, the current VoiceOver a huge leap from what the VoiceOver beta was.
And by the way, I'm navigating my way around the Universal Access prefpane, and what I hear is "Black on White, selected radio button one of two", and then when you select white on black, it says "White on Black, selected radio button two of two". I think that's pretty accessible, if you ask me.
What I love most about VoiceOver is the wide variety of voices, the unbelievable amount of customizability (as compared to Jaws, imho) and that the Xcode/Developer tools come with accessibility tools that make it easy for developers of applications to check if their software works well with the Accessibility features of OS X. And the best thing is, VoiceOver is an Apple product, built into the OS, and is just beautiful.
Every single little touch by the Accessibility team...from the VoiceOver enabled install process (Jaws and Windows doesn't have that kind of feature, obviously because Jaws doesn't come preinstalled with Windows), the VoiceOver enabled login menu and to the little tutorial when you install OS X is a much appreciated little gesture that makes life easier.
Mind you, I'm not blind or anything, but I do do volunteer work helping the blind use computers, and the little things make all the difference.
Accessibility on Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
Accessibility has been the main focus for recent release of KDE.
A few links to relevant pages:
The general tendency is close cooperation between the various projects. No songle project currently offers a complete accessibile solution on Linux, but by combining the different solutions, a lot is possble, and closer cooperation will make even mor ethings possible in the future.
A lot of this cooperation was kicked of at the Unix Accessibility Forum [kde.org] last sumnmer, which the KDE project organised as part of the KDE World Summit.
We are currently busy organising a follow-up event [linaccess.org] during LinuxTag 2005.
Olaf Schmidt, co-maintainer of the KDE Accessibility Project